How You Can Join the Fight to Feed America

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Joe

Here are six ways for you or your community to give food to those who need it.

Fighting Global Hunger, Too Hunger and malnutrition remain even bigger challenges in poor countries around the world, but many charities—including the Howard G. Buffett Foundation, the UN’s World Food Program, and Concern Worldwide US—are fighting to make a difference. And a little goes a long way: A donation of just $19 to Concern provides a family with six egg-laying chickens.

1. How your community gardeners can help.Are local growers overwhelmed with tomatoes in the summer or squash in the fall? Instead of letting excess produce go to waste, go to ampleharvest.org or foodpool.org and connect with food pantries in your area that can use it.

2. How your local cinema can help.Host a movie night to benefit food banks. Last summer the Church of the Good Shepherd in Fort Lee, N.J., joined with the town’s film commission to stage a series of outdoor movie nights. They called it the Canned Film Festival, and the price of admission was—you guessed it—a can of food.

3. How your running club can help.Sign up for Run 10 to Feed 10, an 11-city race series organized by Women’s Health magazine and the Feed Foundation, a global hunger-relief agency. Run 10 kilometers and the foundation will donate 10 meals to needy people in your community.

4. How your neighborhood restaurant can help.Participate in Halfsies, in which patrons of participating restaurants who order certain menu items can pay the full price for a half portion, with a percentage of the difference going to local food banks and global nonprofit partners. Or your favorite eatery can use FlashFood, a mobile app developed by Arizona State students that allows restaurants, hotels, and caterers to indicate they have leftover food available for donation. The idea will be tested next year in Phoenix, where restaurants discard 220,000 pounds of food daily.

5. How your budding artist can help.Make an edible sculpture. At canstruction.org, learn how to organize, enter, or attend an area competition where giant sculptures (think: a life-size VW Beetle) are created using cans of food, which are then donated to hunger-relief organizations.

6. How your busy family can help.Order breakfast at the Double D Diner. This virtual menu lists everything from a $1.89 cup of coffee to a $49.99 buffet—but you won’t actually receive your order. Instead, 90 percent of the proceeds will go to fighting hunger.